Life of St. Francis of Assisi by Paul Sabatier (i am malala young readers edition TXT) 📖
- Author: Paul Sabatier
- Performer: -
Book online «Life of St. Francis of Assisi by Paul Sabatier (i am malala young readers edition TXT) 📖». Author Paul Sabatier
That popular eloquence which was to accomplish so many marvels in 1233 comes down in a straight line from the Franciscan movement. It was St. Francis who set the example of those open-air sermons given in the vulgar tongue, at street corners, in public squares, in the fields.
To feel the change which he brought about we must read the sermons of his contemporaries; declamatory, scholastic, subtile, they delighted in the minutiæ of exegesis or dogma, serving up refined dissertations on the most obscure texts of the Old Testament, to hearers starving for a simple and wholesome diet.
With Francis, on the contrary, all is incisive, clear, practical. He pays no attention to the precepts of the rhetoricians, he forgets himself completely, thinking only of the end desired, the conversion of souls. And conversion was not in his view something vague and indistinct, which must take place only between God and the hearer. No, he will have immediate and practical proofs of conversion. Men must give up ill-gotten gains, renounce their enmities, be reconciled with their adversaries.
At Assisi he threw himself valiantly into the thick of civil dissensions. The agreement of 1202 between the parties who divided the city had been wholly ephemeral. The common people were continually demanding new liberties, which the nobles and burghers would yield to them only under the pressure of fear. Francis took up the cause of the weak, the minores, and succeeded in reconciling them with the rich, the majores.
His spiritual family had not as yet, properly speaking, a name, for, unlike those too hasty spirits who baptize their productions before they have come to light, he was waiting for the occasion that should reveal the true name which he ought to give it.19 One day someone was reading the Rule in his presence. When he came to the passage, "Let the brethren, wherever they may find themselves called to labor or to serve, never take an office which shall put them over others, but on the contrary, let them be always under (sint minores) all those who may be in that house,"20 these words sint minores of the Rule, in the circumstances then existing in the city, suddenly appeared to him as a providential indication. His institution should be called the Order of the Brothers Minor.
We may imagine the effect of this determination. The Saint, for already this magic word had burst forth where he appeared,21 the Saint had spoken. It was he who was about to bring peace to the city, acting as arbiter between the two factions which rent it.
We still possess the document of this pace civile, exhumed, so to speak, from the communal archives of Assisi by the learned and pious Antonio Cristofani.22 The opening lines are as follows:
"In the name of God!
"May the supreme grace of the Holy Spirit assist us! To the honor of our Lord Jesus Christ, the blessed Virgin Mary, the Emperor Otho, and Duke Leopold.
"This is the statute and perpetual agreement between the Majori and Minori of Assisi.
"Without common consent there shall never be any sort of alliance either with the pope and his nuncios or legates, or with the emperor, or with the king, or with their nuncios or legates, or with any city or town, or with any important person, except with a common accord they shall do all which there may be to do for the honor, safety, and advantage of the commune of Assisi."
What follows is worthy of the beginning. The lords, in consideration of a small periodical payment, should renounce all the feudal rights; the inhabitants of the villages subject to Assisi were put on a par with those of the city, foreigners were protected, the assessment of taxes was fixed. On Wednesday, November 9, 1210, this agreement was signed and sworn to in the public place of Assisi; it was made in such good faith that exiles were able to return in peace, and from this day we find in the city registers the names of those émigrés who, in 1202, had betrayed their city and provoked the disastrous war with Perugia. Francis might well be happy. Love had triumphed, and for several years there were at Assisi neither victors nor vanquished.
In the mystic marriages which here and there in history unite a man to a people, something takes place of which the transports of sense, the delirium of love, seem to be the only symbol; a moment comes in which saints, or men of genius, feel unknown powers striving mightily within them; they strive, they seek, they struggle until, triumphing over all obstacles, they have forced trembling, swooning humanity to conceive by them.
This moment had come to St. Francis.
1. 1 Cel., 34; 3 Soc., 53; Bon., 39.
2. Probably at Otricoli, which lies on the high-road between Rome and Spoleto. Orte is an hour and a half further on. It is the ancient Otriculum, where many antiquities have been found.
3. 1 Cel., 35; Bon., 40 and 41.
4. The only road connecting Celano with Rome, as well as with all Central and Northern Italy, passes by Aquila, Rieti, and Terni, where it joins the high-roads leading from the north toward Rome.
5. 1 Cel., 36 and 37; 3 Soc., 54; Bon., 45-48.
6. Isaiah, lv., 2.
7. This Order deserves to be better known; it was founded under Alexander III. and rapidly spread all over Central Italy and the East. In Francis's lifetime it had in Italy and the Holy Land about forty houses dedicated to the care of lepers. It is very probable that it was at San Salvatore delle Pareti that Francis visited these unhappy sufferers. He there made the particular acquaintance of a Cruciger named Morico. The latter afterward falling ill, Francis sent him a remedy which would cure him, informing him at the same time that he was to become his disciple, which shortly afterward took place. The hospital San Salvatore has disappeared; it stood in the place now called Ospedaletto, where a small chapel now stands half way between Assisi and Santa Maria degli Angeli. It was from there that the dying Francis blessed Assisi. For Morico vide 3 Soc., 35; Bon., 49; 2 Cel., 3, 128; Conform., 63b.—For the hospital vide Bon., 49; Conform., 135a, 1; Honorii III. opera, Horoy, t. i., col. 206. Cf. Potthast, 7746; L. Auvray, Registres de Grégoire IX., Paris, 1890, 4to, no. 209. For the Crucigeri in the time of St. Francis vide the interesting bull Cum tu fili prior, of July 8, 1203; Migne, Inn. op., t. ii., col. 125 ff. Cf. Potthast, 1959, and Cum pastoris, April 5, 1204; Migne, loc. cit., 319. Cf. Potthast, 2169 and 4474.
8. 3 Soc., 55.
9. All this yet remains in its primitive state. The road which went from Assisi to the now ruined Abbey of Mount Subasio (almost on the summit of the mountain) passed the Carceri, where there was a little chapel built by the Benedictines.
10. Illi qui religiose volunt stare in eremis sint tres aut quatuor ad plus. Duo ex ipsis sint matres, et habeant duos filios, vel unum ad minus. Illi duo teneant vitam Marthæ et alii duo vitam Mariæ Magdalenæ. Assisi MS., 338, 43a-b; text given also in Conf., 143a, 1, from which Wadding borrows it for his edition of the Opuscules of St. Francis. Cf. 2 Cel., 3, 113. It is possible that we have here a fragment of the Rule, which must have been composed toward 1217.
11. 1 Cel., 42 and 43; 3 Soc., 55; Bon., 41.
12. 1 Cel., 42-44.
13. 2 Cel., 1, 15; Bon., 65. These two authors do not say where the event took place; but there appears to be no reason for suspecting the indication of Rivo-Torto given by the Speculum, fo. 21a.
14. 2 Cel., 3, 110. Cf. Spec., 22a.
15. 1 Cel., 47; Bon., 43.
16. There are few events of the thirteenth century that offer more documents or are more obscure than this one. The chroniclers of the most different countries speak of it at length. Here is one of the shortest but most exact of the notices, given by an eye-witness (Annals of Genoa of the years 1197-1219, apud Mon. Germ. hist. Script., t. 18): 1212 in mense Augusti, die Sabbati, octava Kalendarum Septembris, intravit civitatem Janue quidam puer Teutonicus nomine Nicholaus peregrinationis causa, et cum eo multitudo maxima pelegrinorum defferentes cruces et bordonos atque scarsellas ultra septem millia arbitratu boni viri inter homines et feminas et puellos et puellas. Et die dominica sequenti de civitate exierunt.—Cf. Giacomo di Viraggio: Muratori, t. ix., col. 46: Dicebant quod mare debebat apud Januam siccari et sic ipsi debebant in Hierusalem proficisci. Multi autem inter eos erant filii Nobilium, quos ipsi etiam cum meretricibus destinarunt (!) The most tragic account is that of Alberic, who relates the fate of the company that embarked at Marseilles. Mon. Ger. hist. Script., t. 23, p. 894.
17. The Benedictine chronicler, Albert von Stade (Mon. Ger. hist. Script., t. 16, pp. 271-379), thus closes his notice of the children's crusade: Adhuc quo devenerint ignorantur sed plurimi redierunt, a quibus cum quæreretur causa cursus dixerunt se nescire. Nudæ etiam mulieres circa idem tempus nihil loquentes per villas et civitates cucurrerunt. Loc. cit., p. 355.
18. Chron. Veronese, ann. 1238 (Muratori, Scriptores Rer. Ital., t. viii., p. 626). Cf. Barbarano de' Mironi: Hist. Eccles. di Vicenza, t. ii., pp. 79-84.
19. The Brothers were at first called Viri pænitentiales de civitate Assisii (3 Soc., 37); it appears that they had a momentary thought of calling themselves Pauperes de Assisio, but they were doubtless dissuaded from this at Rome, as too closely resembling that of the Pauperes de Lugduno. Vide Burchardi chronicon., p. 376; vide Introd., cap. 5.
20. Vide Rule of 1221, cap. 7. Cf. 1 Cel., 38, and Bon., 78.
21. 1 Cel., 36.
22. Storia d'Assisi, t. i., pp. 123-129.
Table of
Contents
It was doubtless toward the spring of 1211 that the Brothers quitted Rivo-Torto. They were engaged in prayer one day, when a peasant appeared with an ass, which he noisily drove before him into the poor shelter.
"Go in, go in!" he cried to his beast; "we shall be most comfortable here." It appeared that he was afraid that if the Brothers remained there much longer they would begin to think this deserted place was their own.1 Such rudeness was very displeasing to Francis, who immediately arose and departed, followed by his companions.
Now that they were so numerous the Brothers could no longer continue their wandering life in all respects as in the past; they had need of a permanent shelter and above all of a little chapel. They addressed themselves in vain first to the bishop and then to the canons of San Rufino for the loan of what they needed, but were more fortunate with the abbot of the Benedictines of Mount Subasio, who ceded to them in perpetuity the use of a chapel already very dear to their hearts, Santa Maria degli Angeli or the Portiuncula.2
Francis
Comments (0)